Oh I like the idea of difficulty having better rewards!
Perhaps 0-1 stones for easy, 1 for medium, 2 for hard!
With gold and souls getting a 0/15/30% bonus also!
I’m loving the increased glory rewards!
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Easier because the enemy is weaker is not the same thing as easier because the player is stronger. That’s the flaw in your insistent and repeated logic.
Take most RPGs - tougher fights award more experience and loot - but that’s based on how big / tough / strong the enemy was, not on how weak or strong the player was… As you level up, you can complete those hard battles more easily to get the better rewards.
Ugh this is tiresome… yes low level players and high level players are coming at this from very different angles… the current system rewards time spent playing and penalises higher level players by offering far harder enemies for the same scores…
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I do not care if my opponent is level 1, if he is flinging a mythic goblin troop and is in hard position then his team is going to be difficult to beat over that level 1000 with peasants.
Go ahead and explain the difference to me, then. Because I honestly don’t see it.
Here, however, you are wrong.
In most RPGs stat creep has very little to do with the nature of the fight itself. It’s about keeping people on a treadmill. You keep fighting for better stats so that you can keep fighting for better stats so… etc., etc.
And all the while, the enemies keep pace–or keep slightly ahead–because that’s how the games are designed.
No game can save all the tough, interesting fights for endgame. That would be beyond foolish. If you don’t START with the good stuff, you don’t keep people around long enough to see endgame.
So, no. Stat creep is not a good reflection of difficulty. To rephrase: difficulty and loot quality are DECOUPLED in the average RPG. (This is partly because endgame one day is midgame the next, so the more an RPG expands the more often a player encounters what was once endgame content… as is the case in Gems of War.)
So, no. There is not necessarily any relationship between the two.
There’s a gating effect with stat creep–and this is useful for teaching players new mechanics. First you have one troop, then two, then three, and you learn them at a reasonable pace.
But if we’re talking about a level 100 player who’s beating a level 800 player & successfully navigating the worst that level 800 player can throw out, then the low level player is (obviously) able to keep pace as far as knowledge and ability.
They’re the exact same enemies. Exact same.
When you advance in rank in the leaderboards, the hard, high-point fights are pulled from the top, no matter what your level is. Which is why I pointed out that I’d fought you (and dhil, and others)–because you seem to think that these low-level players are getting points for fighting a lower caliber of team. Nope. They’re fighting the level 1000s, they’re doing it with a weaker deck, they’re winning. Why isn’t that worth more points?
On the other hand, maybe it should all be flat. That would be fine. But if you really think that… if that’s the new rule… then it should be consistent. Harder and easier fights ought to offer the same rewards to everyone. Not just high level players who want those ten extra PVP points.
But, gosh, you’d almost think it was an awful idea.
Thanks for taking the time to write so much… and keeping it civil… but I fundamentally disagree… I can’t associate with your viewpoint any more than you can with mine, and your logic seems as inconsistent and flawed to me as mine does to you… let’s leave it at that.
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Fundamentally, this is what I hear you saying: You know what the leaderboards OUGHT to look like, and the actual point distribution system/rank system ought to be redesigned until they produce the result you expect.
It really doesn’t surprise me that you can’t back up any of your opinions with explanations. When you try, you talk yourself out of your own ideas (as in the quote above).
But, sure. My logic is the problem.
@Jainus: I realize it is probably not what you want to do, but I suggest you do as I am doing right now: Just ignore the leaderboard. It is not a fair (equal/level) playing field right now with higher level players being penalized for having better troops and more traits, etc., by giving them fewer PVP points when beating the exact same opponent team as a lower levelled player.
There have been quite a few topics about this so I just can’t imagine that @Sirrian and @Nimhain aren’t aware of how a significant number of (admittedly vocal) players feel about the current PVP leaderboard. Maybe they’ll do something about it (soom?). I certainly hope so. I like a competitive element in the games I play, which currently is sadly lacking for me in GoW…
Continueing this discussion wiith @personette would seem to be of no use here. Two polar opposite viewpoints are rarely going to result in a signicant change of opinion in one of the parties. Big kudos to both of you for keeping it clean and civil though. That’s certainly a rarity on most internet forums when polar opposites “clash”…
What part of ‘let’s leave it at that’ did you not follow?
I don’t agree with your opinions and your logic seems flawed to me. You think exactly the same about me. I have mixed views about this topic but many things strike me as unfair. They don’t to you because you think differently to me.
EDIT:
Just to be clear, and sorry if my frustrations are showing… as @darkness says you are not persuading me towards your viewpoint and your tone is starting to veer into making it sound personal… Sorry if I have appeared antagonistic - the issue despite your sarcasm is indeed ‘your logic’ - not that it isn’t valid to you, but it isn’t my logic, and my different views aren’t wrong just because you can’t see things from my shoes. Let’s move on, then, please…
There are a couple contradictory game models at work here. The point allocation is very reminiscent of something like ELO, where the goal is to find the “correct” ranking of players as quickly as possible, based on a “hidden” value of skill. Points are assigned based on whether you are expected to win a particular matchup based on your relative rankings. Winning against a player with a much higher rank than yourself suggests that you are incorrectly ranked much too low, and so a high number of points is rewarded in an attempt to correct the rankings.
However, in GoW, it seems like they’ve based the point allocation on level, rather than rank, and so that logic doesn’t work. Level isn’t a good measure of power in GoW – which they seem to have recognized in creating the team power system. Level is purely a product of time invested, whereas power depends on luck (acquiring troops, traitstones) and intelligent allocation of resources. A low-level player may get lucky and be able to build a powerful team by focusing their resources on it, whereas a high-level player may have squandered their resources on poor teams.
The tier system also places a fixed value on points, giving the player the goal of reaching at least 1900 points per week. In systems like ELO, the points themselves have no inherent value – their value is only relative to that of other players in the system, because its sole purpose is to rank them, not reward them for reaching certain point totals. The GoW point system is also highly inflationary, because the winners gain more points than the losers lose, making it more a function of number of games played than skill.
The thing is, the value of those rewards remains the same, relative to the strength of the player and the enemy. It’s typically a treadmill scenario, where by the time you are strong enough to win those fights and receive those rewards, you need them just to keep pace. You get more EXP, but levels take more EXP. You get more gold, but items and equipment are more expensive. You’re not actually getting better rewards, relatively. Their absolute, inherent value is higher, but their utility is no better relative to your strength.
The problem is that GoW has intertwined these sort of systems by giving PvP points both an absolute and a relative value. It’s not fair that it takes more games for high-level players to reach tier 1. But if points were based entirely on the level of the opponent, and not your relative strength, then ranking would not be an accurate measure of effort or skill. Players with powerful teams, and lots of resources invested in them, would be able to burn through high-point targets far more quickly and easily than low-level but skillful players. Low-level players would have to play either significantly more games, or an equal number of significantly longer games, to reach the same rank as a higher-level player. If the leaderboard is strongly biased towards high-level players, then rank provides no new information that level didn’t already. What should the leaderboard actually be measuring?
I can understand without choosing to obey.
In general, though, that’s a point I’ve wanted to make for a while, not directed as you specifically (though you’ve been pretty blunt about it).
Even though it’s obvious that a hero’s level reflects time played more than anything else, there is a general assumption that higher level players are more skilled. Based on this assumption, the proof that the leaderboards reflect skill would be leaderboards dominated by higher level players.
But really, skill is not the determining factor here. The game doesn’t allow fine distinctions based on skill. Too many players can be the best at Gems of War for that to be possible. So that leaves the question: should the leaderboards reflect (1) Time spent playing (2) Raw number of wins or (3) Difficulty.
As far as I can tell, the devs have tried to make each of those three things matter. Put in enough time and you could balance out your losses. Win fast enough and you could outpace the turtle who has a lot of time on his hands.
Difficulty is the only factor here which is, potentially, unfair. It’s unfair because only low level players can face high difficulty matches.
I assume that the theory here is that everyone should have a shot at the leaderboards. Low level players get a handicap, basically. High level players are saying that the handicap is too great; that when a low-level player with dramatically weaker cards beats a high-level player with fantastic cards, it’s worth less than ten points.
Phrased like that–it’s a fair question. I don’t know how many points it ought to be worth. Maybe it should be fewer. But I do strongly believe that difficulty is a factor and that low level players should get some sort of handicap.
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I mean the time high level players play, don’t worth their pvp points.
You should know one thing, some low level players are using quite perfect teams, their teams are usually hard to beat, and a waste of much time, so, why should we high level players get only less than 40 pvp points after a win battle?
You know, I do wonder what the difference would be between an iron gauntlet score that ranked a hero, lock stock & barrel, vs a score that just ranked a team.
Because it seems like that might be one way to equalize things. Specific teams draw level with one another long before the heroes, measured entire, ever would.
Maybe there’s a technical limitation? A defending team is probably easy to score–recalculate every time the defenders are set–but you set your attacking team after the selection screen, so after the points and rewards are calculated.
I’m not savvy enough about technical issues to say, but for sure it would require a lot of rearranging to make the change.
Actually I believe this IS fixed, in the fact that you DO lose PVP points. It is bugged in the fact that the loss doesn’t get shown on your player profile, or break the win streak mentioned. Both of which are cosmetic, but will skew the perception of the fix being implemented.
Slightly off topic, but it seems PVP points for people of the SAME level are not fair too… As a mid 900s level player, over my first ~200 wins last week I averaged 51 points per win. This included the ‘gift’ points at the start of the week. I saw another player in the low 900s who’s average over a similar number of matches was 59. I ALWAYS pick the highest valued opponent, and I never see anyone worth more than 54 points. How is this other person averaging so much per fight? I tried setting a weaker defensive team and it didn’t change the value of who I was offered to fight. Is there some other way to game this system that I am not aware of? Seems completely unfair for the rankings… Honestly they should just make it a flat 20,35,50 points for everyone…
There are more recent threads discussing this same topic. For example:
In this thread, I reported on an experiment I did to see how high an average PVP score I could maintain. The key thing was that I had just moved into a casual guild and didn’t benefit from any guild bonuses. I was around level 1000 at the time that I did this and was able to average almost 65 points per battle while only using a handful of gems. There are links to a similar discussion in another thread in that thread. This issue has been beaten to death and it is on the devs’ list of issues to deal with, but there is no timeline yet. They’ll be looking at PVP points, gold rewards, etc. in one of the future updates, maybe even the next one.
ONE. YEAR. LATER. srsly? oO!?
Thanks for the link Stan, for whatever reason my search only returned this thread and not that one. I see that the problem seems to be the guild bonuses…